It is known how to vibrate the mould in the casting direction to prevent adherence of the billet to the cooled inner walls of the casting pipe in the continuous casting of metals, in particular in the continuous casting of steel.
A conventional vibrating device of continuous casting equipment comprises a lifting table, on which the continuous casting mould is arranged as a unit. These lifting tables are relatively heavy and in addition require quite a large amount of space under the mould, where this space is not always available.
The international patent application WO 95/03904 describes a mould which has a fixed casing, to which a casting pipe is connected via two flexibly deformable annular sealing diaphragms in such a way that it can vibrate in the casing along the casting axis. The annular sealing diaphragms seal an annular pressure chamber for a cooling liquid around the casting pipe. The casting pipe comprises at its top end lateral bearing journals, with which it is suspended in an oscillating lever. The latter is pivoted about a horizontal axis in the casing. A lever arm is led through a seal from the pressure chamber and connected to a lifting cylinder, which generates the vibrations. With this mould the weight of the parts to be vibrated and thus the power input are greatly reduced. A disadvantage of this mould is that changing of the casting pipe is relatively time-consuming, because the annular sealing diaphragms must first be dismantled.
International patent application WO 95/05910 describes a compact vibrating device, which has an annular lifting cylinder, into which a mould consisting of a casting pipe and a cooling box can be suspended axially. The cooling box of the mould is connected via flexible pipe connections to fixed connection pieces for the purpose of connection to a cooling water circuit.